Book lovers — The original portfolio of the Pesti Napló

Pesti Napló, February 1897 (Volume 48, Nos. 32-59)

The "old booksellers" are becoming fewer and fewer in Budapest; the old big companies, which could still compete with the antiquarians of Leipzig, Munich, Frankfurt and Vienna, have either closed their shops or retreated to the narrow streets of the Inner City and Lipótváros, where they only sell sleepy books to the housekeepers, or old French grammars to the housekeepers' daughters who dream of going to the cinema. In fact, the first real antiquarian of the old Pest has now "sunk" so much that it only sells new books, which it receives on consignment from the publishers, and new works by novice writers and poets - at antiquarian prices.

Why is the trade in old books not flourishing in Budapest? Is it because there are not enough book lovers in Hungary, or is it because we do not have qualified booksellers? The majority of books shipped to Hungary from abroad are second-hand books, so the lack of compassion of the reading public is not the reason for this decline; we also have qualified booksellers who studied bookselling in Leipzig, Munich, and Frankfurt, so this could not stand in the way of the development of antiquarian stores. But the competition from pseudo-antiquarian stores did destroy the antiquarian stores in Budapest. Those "book" stores that sell only pornographic works ruined the antiquarian stores. The publishers of Boccaccio, Half-Virgins, and Aphrodite antiquarian stores attracted the public that had previously taken their saved kreutzers to antiquarian stores. The good old bookstores are on the verge of collapse, and have moved from the main routes to the old streets of Belváros and Lipótváros. Many of these bookstores are completely unknown to the book-buying public, and book lovers and book collectors mostly obtain their books from abroad. I know a book collector who obtains old books printed in Budapest through a company in Frankfurt.

Very few people in Hungary collect new books today, and it is good if fifty copies of the most sensational novelties, for example a new play by Ibsen, are sold in Hungary. Of the newer products of French literature, only novels are sold out. However, this is partly due to the booksellers. For example: Austrian and Hungarian booksellers have formed a cartel to calculate the franc to their customers as 60 kreis, and sell a new book that costs 45-46 kreis for 60 kreis. That is, they sell the book 25-30 percent more expensive than its real price, even though they receive the usual 25 percent discount from the publisher anyway.